This invention relates to a safety bushing for preventing an empty shell casing from being jammed in a chamber of a hand gun by an extractor rod for removing the casing from the chamber.
A revolver commonly used by law enforcement officers includes an extractor rod for emptying spent shell casings from the chambers in the gun cylinder. The extractor rod includes an extractor having fingers which project into respective chambers of the gun cylinder. The tip of each finger fits under a rim on a corresponding shell casing, and the officer empties the chambers by depressing the extractor rod which causes the extractor to slide the shell casings out of the chambers.
In a service revolver manufactured by Smith and Wesson, the extractor slides the spent shell casings entirely out of the chamber when the extractor rod is actuated. This type of revolver is commonly used by most law enforcement officers in this country. To empty the shell casings from the chambers, the officer inverts the gun and depresses the extractor rod and waits for the casings to fall clear of the weapon before releasing the extractor rod.
When a shell casing is withdrawn entirely from the chamber, the extractor is free to pass over the end of the rim on a shell case; and if the officer releases the extractor rod too quickly, without waiting long enough for the cases to clear the weapon, the extractor can push the case back into the chamber and can jam the case in the chamber. The extractor is then not in a position to withdraw the case from the chamber, and the officer will not be able to reload until the case is removed from the chamber. This requires a tedious and time-consuming task of picking the case out of the chamber, say by removing the case by hand or by inserting a probe into the opposite end of the chamber and pushing the case out of the chamber.
If an officer is in a stress situation, such as being under fire, the officer can easily allow the extractor rod to return too quickly and therefore jam a spent casing in the chamber. The officer then can be defenseless until he can remove the jammed casing and reload. Several actual cases have occurred in which an officer jammed a shell casing in his service revolver while under fire.
The present invention provides means for limiting the stroke length of an ejector rod in a revolver of the type used by law enforcement officers. By limiting the stroke of the ejector rod, the shell casing is not entirely withdrawn from the chamber when the extractor rod is pushed its full stroke length, although the extractor rod can travel through a stroke length long enough to allow the shell casings to easily fall from the chambers. In this way the extractor cannot slip over the end of a casing and jam the casing in a chamber during the return stroke of the extractor rod.